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Quotations on Justification from Saint Mark The Ascetic, part 1

October 9, 2010 9:36 am / 3 Comments on Quotations on Justification from Saint Mark The Ascetic, part 1

St. Mark was an early fifth century monk also known as Mark the Monk or Mark the Hermit.  The following quotations are taken from his writing entitled “On Those who Think that They are Made Righteous by Works: Two Hundred and Twenty-Six Texts” in The Philokalia: Volume One, compiled by St. Nikodimos and St. Makarios, translated and edited by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1983).  The numbers that follow the quotations do not indicate page numbers but paragraph numbers.

One of the interesting things to note about St. Mark’s writing on this subject is his unwillingness to teach easy-believism, yet his equal unwillingness to teach that God gives us heaven or hell based merely on an examination of our external works.  St. Mark teaches that Christ will judge each man “according to whether his works are done with faith or without faith” in Christ (§22).  Whether we get into heaven or are condemned to hell, Mark teaches, depends on whether our works were done with faith in Christ.  This is a little different from the typical evangelical way of speaking about salvation.  This means it is based on works (in some sense), yet it is ultimately based on faith.  Could this early Father of the church be teaching something compatible with evangelical doctrine?  Let the reader decide for herself. And let her also feel free to leave her answer in the comment thread. 🙂

Those who, because of the rigour of their own ascetic practice, despise the less zealous, think that they are made righteous by physical works.  But we are even more foolish if we rely on theoretical knowledge and disparage the ignorant.  Even though knowledge is true, it is still not firmly established if unaccompanied by works.  For everything is established by being put into practice (§11-12).

When we fulfil the commandments in our outward actions, we receive from the Lord what is appropriate; but any real benefit we gain depends on our inward intention.  If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it.  This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.  The intellect does many good and bad things without the body, whereas the body can do neither good nor evil without the intellect.  This is because the law of freedom applies to what happens before we act. (§15-17).

Some without fulfilling the commandments think that they posses true faith.  Others fulfil the commandments and then expect the kingdom as a reward due to them.  Both are mistaken. A master is under no obligation to reward his slaves; on the other hand, those who do not serve him well are not given their freedom. (§18).

When the Scripture says “He will reward every man according to his works” (Matt. 16:27), do not imagine that works in themselves merit either hell or the kingdom.  On the contrary, Christ rewards each man according to whether his works are done with faith or without faith in Himself; and He is not a dealer bound by contract, but God our Creator and Redeemer. (§22).

::: The Sola Fide of Karl Barth ::: Justification by Faith Alone?

March 19, 2009 4:50 pm / 4 Comments on ::: The Sola Fide of Karl Barth ::: Justification by Faith Alone?

Nowhere does Barth sound more like a typical Western Protestant than in his forensic categories for justification (as we have already seen) and his insistence upon what he understands to be the meaning of justification sola fide, yet Barth differs from the Reformers in crucial ways in his understanding of justification.  Perhaps the biggest difference in Barth’s sola fide is that he does not consider the justification of man to be contingent upon faith but rather how man’s relationship to God’s redemption in the twofold divine sentence is “realized.”[1]  Nevertheless, his insistence that faith never be seen as the attainment of merit or the accomplishment of justifying righteousness pervades his discussion of what is meant by faith alone.  Barth makes this point countless times and appears to say it as many ways as he knows how.  He sees this as the point of Paul’s faith-works dichotomy and of Luther’s sola fide.[2] 

There is no instance of the combination δικ. δια την πιστιν. This means that from the standpoint of biblical theology the root is cut of all the later conceptions which tried to attribute to the faith of man a merit for the attainment of justification or co-operation in its fulfillment, or to identify faith, its rise and continuance and inward and outward work with justification. … As a human attitude and action faith stands over against the divine attitude and action described as δικαιουν, without competing with it, or preparing it, or anticipating it, or co-operating with it, let alone being identical with it.  … [Faith as a human work] corresponds on the human side, to his divine justification.  Not because of its intrinsic value.  Not because of its particular virtue, or any particular power of its own.  But because God accepts it as the human work which corresponds to His work … which corresponds to His righteousness.  God recognizes, not that by this action man fulfils a condition or attains something which makes him worthy of the divine pardon … It is the good pleasure of God which singles out from all others this particular human action. … As the doctrine of “justification by faith” (alone) this conception of Paul was rediscovered in the century of the Reformation, and as such it was both attacked and defended.  … “Justification by faith” cannot mean that instead of his customary evil works and in place of all kinds of supposed good works man chooses and accomplishes the work of faith, in this way pardoning and therefore justifying himself. … There is always something wrong and misleading when the faith of a man is referred to as his way of salvation in contrast to his way in wicked works.[3] 

Taking this protestant stance on justification, Barth scathes any understanding that justification is “by” faith precisely because of the particular good qualities of it (even as the gift of God)—faith as notitia (knowledge), assensus (assent of the will) or even fiducia (the heart’s trust) is not what justifies man.[4]  This humble and free despair is what is most important for Barth about faith as it relates to justification. 

There is as little praise of man on the basis of his faith as on that of his works. … For there is as little justification of man “by”—that is to say, by means of—the faith produced by him, by his treading the way of faith, by his achievement of the emotions and thoughts and acts of faith, by his whole consciousness of faith and life of faith, as there is a justification “by” any other works. … If it tried to be this, if man tried to believe with this purpose and intention and claim, then even if his faith was not a “dead” faith, even if it was a most “hearty” faith, even if it was a fiduciary faith most active in love, it would be there supreme and most proper form of his sin as the sin of pride.[5]

For this reason, Barth is not even comfortable speaking of “justifying faith.”[6]  In order to prevent a misunderstanding of faith as contributing anything to man’s justification, Barth attempts to place the importance of faith elsewhere than on notitia, assensus, and fiducia.  Barth would rather speak of faith as consisting “wholly and utterly” in humility because “it is the abdication of vain-glorious man from his vain-glory,” or rather a “radical and total distaste for it.”[7]  Faith is a “despairing of self,” a joyful “humility of obedience,” a “free decision,” and “a comforted despair.”[8]  Because of his denial that man’s justification is dependant upon any human response and is “realized” (not actualized) through faith, Barth’s sola fide is very different from that of any of the Magisterial Reformers.  Even when he is attempting to echo the Reformers teaching that justification is not “by faith alone” because only faith contains the virtuous qualities necessary for being considered just in the eyes of God, he prefers to argue that faith is God’s chosen instrument for “realizing” one’s justification because it is a humble despair of self, not on account of its notitia, assensus, and fiducia. 

 

[1] Ibid., 615.  Carl F. H. Henry includes Barth in a list of modern theologians who deprived faith of it’s cognitive content, thus perverting the doctrine of justification by faith.  Although he admits that later Barth did try to rescue justification by faith from this dilemma, he complains that it was too little too late.  Carl F. H. Henry, “Justification by Ignorance: A Neo-Protestant Motif?” Jounral of the Evangelical Theological Society, vol 13 no 1 (1970): 3-4.  

[2] “Luther’s sola fide: the opposition of faith to all and every work; the two statements (1) that no human work as such either is or includes man’s justification (not even the work of faith as such), but (2) that the believer is actually the man justified by God. … The works to which they referred in this context are the thoughts and words and achievements of sinful man, including the works which he is able and willing and ready to do and produce as such in relation to the revelation of God and in obedience to His Law. … The sola fide does not actually occur in the Pauline texts.  Yet it was not an importation into the texts, but a genuine interpretation of what Paul himself said without using the word sola, when Luther translated Rom 3:28. … [For] if he is not justified by the works of the holy Law of God, but by faith, then obviously he is justified only by faith, by faith alone, sola fide.”  Ibid., 621-22.  Barth marvels that “even Augustine, the only name we can consider, did not understand him as the Reformers did.  He did not understand the principle underlying the Pauline distinction of faith and works. … How could Augustine—and in his wake all Catholic exegesis and dogmatics—possibly have understood justification as a process which is fulfilled in the human subject, allowing it simply to begin with faith and to be completed with the infused grace of love, if he had had before him the contrast of Galatians as it revealed itself afresh to Luther.” Ibid., 623. 

[3] Ibid., 615. 

[4] Barth believes himself to be following the sharp distinction of John Calvin on this point. 

[5] Ibid., 616. 

[6] Ibid., 618. 

[7] Ibid., 618-19.

[8] Ibid., 619.

Karl Barth’s Denial of Justification as the chief Article of Soteriology

March 16, 2009 1:53 am / Leave a comment

Sometimes Barth speaks of the unique importance of the doctrine of justification in such a way that one might think he understood its role in theology in much the same way the Reformers did.

There is no part of dogmatics, no locus, where we can treat it lightly.  At every point we are dealing with the one high Gospel.  What we can and must say is that in the doctrine of justification we are dealing with the most pronounced and puzzling form of this transition because we are dealing specifically with the question of its final possibility. … But in the doctrine of justification we have to do with the original centre of this crisis [between holy God and sinful man], and to that extent with its sharpest form, with what we can describe provisionally as the crisis which underlies the whole.  If we find it running through the whole with all kinds of repetitions and variations, at this point where we grapple with the peculiar difficulty of it, it has to be seen and handled as the main theme—the question: How am I to lay hold of a gracious God?[1]

Nevertheless, Barth distinguishes himself from the Western Protestantism of his own day and his contemporary interlocutor Ernst Wolf by allowing the article of justification to be one among many aspects of the gospel, not necessarily the Word of Gospel itself.

There can be no question of disputing the particular function of the doctrine of justification.  And it is also in order that at certain periods and in certain situations, in the face of definite opposition and obscuration, this particular function has been brought out in a particular way, that it has been asserted as the Word of the Gospel, that both offensively and defensively it has been adopted as the theological truth.  There have been times when this has been not  merely legitimate but necessary, when attention has had to be focused on the theology of Galatians and Romans (or more accurately, Rom 1-8). … [e.g. Augustine] … But in theology it is good to look beyond the needs and necessities of the moment, to exercise restraint in a reaction however justified to be constantly aware of the limits of the ruling trend (however true and well-founded it may be).  … In the Church of Jesus Christ this doctrine has not always been the Word of the Gospel, and it would be an act of narrowing and unjust exclusiveness to proclaim and treat it as such. … [I]t relates only to one aspect of the Christian message of reconciliation. … [I]n the true Church of Jesus Christ the formulated recognition and attestation of this truth may withdraw, it may indeed be more or less hidden behind other aspects of the Christian message, without it being right and necessary to draw attention to its absence, to believe that its truth is denied and the unity of the Church is broken.  … The Christology of Paul is more than simply an argument for his doctrine of justification.[2]

Several observations of Church history are set forth by Barth at this juncture to compliment his position and help set this doctrine in perspective.  For example, he raises the point that the early church saw no explicit treatment or emphasis on the doctrine of justification, and the development that took place in the writings of Augustine “was something which belonged specifically to the Western Church.  The East was much less interested in the contrast between sin and grace than in that between death and life, between mortality and immortality.”[3]  He also claims that John Calvin’s thought was controlled and organized by “the development and formation of the Christian life and therefore of sanctification,” and was even “overshadowed” by his doctrine of predestination which “plumbed the matter even further.”[4]  He concludes: “One thing is certain—that if the theology of Calvin has a centre at all it does not lie in the doctrine of justification.”[5] 

Even Martin Luther himself, Barth argued, always had a twofold emphasis in his teaching: one having to do with the once-and-for-all work of Christ and another having to do with the righteousness which is given to man in the Spirit’s work of new birth.[6]  Luther insisted that both justification and sanctification are in need of being properly maintained.  “If either of them is forgotten or neglected in favour of the other, this will inevitably involve the corruption either of faith or of its power and fruit.”[7]   Pointing out that Luther’s own understanding of justification was a theolgia viatorum (being reformed and developed throughout his life), he remarks, “Luthernaism old and new followed the direction of Luther—or at least the older Luther—when, like Calvin and Calvinism, it refused to centre its theology upon the one article of justification.”[8] 

Pietism and Methodism also put their chief emphasis on aspects of reconciliation which Barth argues cannot be subsumed under the narrow category of justification.  Barth’s alternative form of thought was, he hoped, more balanced, a midway between placing too much emphasis and importance on the article of justification on the one hand (as if it were the gospel and to the neglect of other equally important aspects of reconciliation) and relegating it to secondary or marginal status on the other. 

All honour to the question: How can I find a gracious God?  But for too long it has been for Protestantism—at any rate European and especially German Protestantism—the occasion and temptation to a certain narcissism, and a consequent delay in moving in the direction we have just indicated.  The articulus stantis et cadentis acclesiae is not the doctrine of justification as such, but its basis and culmination: the confession of Jesus Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Co. 2:3) … The problem of justification does not need artificially to be absolutised and given a monopoly.[9]        

Alister McGrath speculates that such a demotion of the importance of the doctrine of justification in Barth’s theology results from his “essentially supralapsarian understanding of the Fall” and reflects a broader theological trend: 

 [T]he onset of Reformed orthodoxy saw the starting point for theological speculation shifted from the concrete event of the justification of the sinner in Christ to the divine decrees of election and reprobation. … As a result, justification is accorded a place of low priority in the ordo salutis, in that it is merely the concrete actualization of the prior divine decision of election.  Barth approximates more closely to the theological method of Reformed orthodoxy than to that of Calvin.[10]

Although Barth saw himself in basic agreement with the Reformers, he ultimately believed that the level of importance Luther placed on this doctrine was driven largely by their cultural context.

 

[1] CD IV/1: 520-21.

[2] Ibid., 522-24.

[3] Ibid., 524. 

[4] Ibid., 525. 

[5] Ibid. 

[6] Ibid., 525-26. 

[7] Ibid., 526. 

[8] Ibid., 526-27. 

[9] Ibid., 527-28. 

[10] McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 400. cf. Alister McGrath, “Karl Barth and the articulus iustificationis,” Theologische Zeitschrift, vol 39 (1983): 349-361. 

 

The Pope Believes in Justification by Faith

January 18, 2009 11:18 pm / 4 Comments on The Pope Believes in Justification by Faith

(And before you think I’m theologically naive, make sure you read my comments that follow the quotation)

The following excerpts come from the lips of Pope Ratzinger himself, spoken Nov. 19th 2008.  

On the journey we have undertaken under the guidance of St. Paul, we now wish to reflect on a topic that is at the center of the controversies of the century of the Reformation: the issue of justification.

…

To be just means simply to be with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Other observances are no longer necessary.

That is why Luther’s expression “sola fide” is true if faith is not opposed to charity, to love. Faith is to look at Christ, to entrust oneself to Christ, to be united to Christ, to be conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence, to believe is to be conformed to Christ and to enter into his love. That is why, in the Letter to the Galatians, St. Paul develops above all his doctrine on justification; he speaks of faith that operates through charity (cf. Galatians 5:14).

…

Paul knows that in the double love of God and neighbor the whole law is fulfilled. Thus the whole law is observed in communion with Christ, in faith that creates charity. We are just when we enter into communion with Christ, who is love. We will see the same in next Sunday’s Gospel for the solemnity of Christ the King. It is the Gospel of the judge whose sole criterion is love. What I ask is only this: Did you visit me when I was sick? When I was in prison? Did you feed me when I was hungry, clothe me when I was naked? So justice is decided in charity. Thus, at the end of this Gospel, we can say: love alone, charity alone. However, there is no contradiction between this Gospel and St. Paul. It is the same vision, the one according to which communion with Christ, faith in Christ, creates charity. And charity is the realization of communion with Christ. Thus, being united to him we are just, and in no other way.

…

Paul’s experience of the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus led him to see that it is only by faith in Christ, and not by any merit of our own, that we are made righteous before God. Our justification in Christ is thus God’s gracious gift, revealed in the mystery of the Cross. Christ died in order to become our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (cf. 1 Cor 1:30), and we in turn, justified by faith, have become in him the very righteousness of God (cf. 2 Cor 5:21). In the light of the Cross and its gifts of reconciliation and new life in the Spirit, Paul rejected a righteousness based on the Law and its works.

Actually, in droves Catholics have come around to basically granting a doctrine of justification by faith.  

If your reaction is, “Yeah … but they don’t mean by faith alone,” you probably have been too influenced by uninformed Protestant rhetoric and haven’t been following the ecumenical discussion carefully enough.  If you say, “Yeah but when Catholics affirm justification by faith alone or by grace alone, they don’t mean the same thing the Reformers did,” well … The Reformers themselves didn’t mean the same thing by “justification by faith alone.”

There is no single doctrine of justification in the Reformation.  

To this very day Protestants understand the doctrine differently (nothwithstanding much overlap between their views, and between their views and Catholic views).  Thus, Martin Luther taught a sola fide, Calvin taught a sola fide, and Catholics also teach a sola fide, yet each are different in significant ways I do not have time to fully develop here.  They all have one thing in common: they all affirm that justifying righteousness originates outside of us in God himself (extra nos) and justifies us by grace alone (sola gratia), and the faith by which we are justified is a free gift of God—-notwithstanding the fact that all language of “free gift” and “sola gratia” are going to be understood differently by Arminians and Calvinists/Augustinians.  (It is the latter point of difference that caused a great deal of the tension between Luther and the Catholic Church).     

If you still think I’m theologically naive, leave comments in the thread.  It may be because I can’t say everything in one post.  

 

|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__HT: Zenit

What Martin Luther Really Said ::: Luther’s Sola Fide

January 17, 2009 1:02 am / 19 Comments on What Martin Luther Really Said ::: Luther’s Sola Fide

Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification is all too often assumed to be the same doctrine that later wound up in the Reformed Orthodox creeds.  This sola fide (the one of Reformed Orthodoxy) tends to be read back into the magisterial Reformers, and in this manner the nuances of the original Reformation sola fide are missed.  

The excerpts below come from Martin Luther’s introduction and summary of the book of Romans.  Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, trans. J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids: Kregel Classic, Zondervan, 1954).  

Notice that Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness is faith itself because faith satisfies the law.  Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness, then, was not Christ’s active and passive obedience, as in much of the Reformed versions of the doctrine of imputation.   (more…)

• The • Sufficiency • of the • Gospel • Mark Dever on Richard Sibbes

January 11, 2009 6:32 pm / 3 Comments on • The • Sufficiency • of the • Gospel • Mark Dever on Richard Sibbes

As I was cleaning my room today I listened to a lecture by Mark Dever, who did his Ph.D. at Cambridge on the Puritan Richard Sibbes.  Richard was not like the other Puritans in that he did not ultimately break with the Church of England during the time of the great Exodus of Puritan preachers.  Why?  Because he believed that unity in the gospel was more important than correctness in the secondary matters.  I was actually surprised to hear Mark Dever approve of Sibbes’ perspective, and challenge young evangelical ministers to recover the distinction between the essential (the gospel) and the non-essential.  I agree with the spirit of Dever’s understanding as expressed in this lecture, only I wouldn’t confuse the basic gospel message with the doctrine of justification the way he does (see below).  I believe Eastern Orthodox Christians and Catholic Christians believe in the redemptive death, burial and resurrection and lordship of Jesus Christ regardless of what their doctrine of justification might be.        

 Here are some quotations from Dever’s Gheens Lecture Series at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary:

“We must be united, Sibbes taught, and we must be united around the gospel.” – Mark Dever

 “In Sibbes’ hand, the centrality of preaching was a force for unity, not for dissent. … And it did so exactly because whatever other problems the church might have had, it was a church committed to the Protestant—that is to say the Biblical—gospel, the good news of justification by faith alone in Christ alone.  And to leave such a church, would be tantamount to rending Christ’s body.” – Mark Dever

“Sibbes knew that the main point is the reconciliation of man to God, which is accomplished by the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  So, preaching is more fundamental than polity.  I could be convinced of congregationalism biblically, and convinced that the gospel is more important.  One of the things that we as evangelicals must do is recover that territory in between essential and unimportant. … It’s a vast tract that we must recover for faithfulness to scripture.  There could be many things that are important that are not essential.  There could be things that are important that are not essential.  And there could be things that are kind of important that are not essential. … But simply because something is not essential does not therefore mean it is unimportant.  We need to recover this in our own reflection on our lives, reflection on scripture, and in our preaching in our churches.  If we do we’ll easily understand how preaching is more fundamental to polity, and yet polity is not a matter to be disregarded.” – Mark Dever

—————————————HT: Good Soldiers

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